Mira Corpora (5 page)

Eventually the curtains part and Sara appears in the window. She flits there for a few seconds, her plump palm resting flat against the pane. Her gaze runs straight through me as if I'm already dead. I shout her name, but the only thing that answers me is a warm handprint on the glass that's already beginning to evaporate.

The wind blusters in a succession of frigid gusts. My face is
raw and chapped. My hands won't stop trembling. It feels like I'm coming apart. I launch another fistful of gravel at the window. The stones jangle off the rotten wooden siding, but none of them even scrapes the second floor.

“Your aim is for shit.”

It's the skinhead girl. She adjusts the tips of her horn-rimmed glasses as if trying to bring my curious activity into better focus. The rest of the road is empty, but the other kids must be watching, too. Hosts of them are squatting in the surrounding derelict bungalows. It's easy to imagine their round faces, like balls on strings, suspended in the dirty windows. I let the rest of the pebbles sift through my fingers.

“You freaked out by the blank page?” the girl asks.

“Of course not,” I say. “It doesn't have to mean something bad.”

“That so?”

“Maybe it's like my destiny is still wide open. Nothing's been written yet. Everything is still up to me. That's pretty good, right?”

“So why are you out here in the rain throwing rocks at their window?”

I start to sneeze. Violent, hunched over, full-body sneezes. My eyes are red and watery. My entire body aches. The skinhead girl opens her umbrella and holds it over us. The raindrops thrum against the plastic canopy and it sounds like all the pebbles I've lofted into the air are slowly tumbling down on my head. “Maybe they made a mistake,” she says softly.

“It's no big deal,” I say. “Just some old sheet of notebook paper.” I pluck the page from my back pocket and stretch it between my hands. I find myself holding it up like a blank billboard toward Sara's window. My fingers are quivering.

“You're getting it wet,” she says.

I crush the paper into a wad and toss it on the ground. With the toe of my shoe, I stamp on it and rub it apart. The soggy
sheet breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, until there's nothing but hundreds of dirty white flecks that resemble the rubbery shavings of an eraser.

A small audience of onlookers has gathered on the edges of the road. They stand with eyes averted, as if they've just witnessed some tragic event and are trying to downplay its importance. More people leave the abandoned houses and venture into the rainy street in twos and threes, covering their heads with bags and old newspapers. I figure they're coming to offer advice or consolation about the blank page, but they push past me and flock toward the oracles' porch. They all begin to file inside.

“Time for the nightly concert,” the skinhead girl says. “Maybe you can talk to Sara after the show.” She grabs me by the wrist and leads me toward the entrance.

Everyone has assembled in the living room, huddling on sagging couches, squatting on scratchy wool blankets, standing with backs hugging the plaster walls. A sickly sweet jasmine incense fills the air and masks the stench of stale sweat. A semi-circle of candles provides the light. The melted wax marks off the stage area, spreading like tree roots across the warped floorboards.

I sit on a coffee-stained sofa, balanced on wobbly box springs that threaten to uncoil. It feels like I'm getting sicker by the minute, alternating between face-reddening fever and teeth-chattering chills. Maybe I really am dying. People's gazes circle back to me with vulturous curiosity.

The room hushes. Three pairs of white athletic socks appear through the slats of the staircase, then the oracles swish their nightgowns and make a full-bodied entrance. They assume their place at the center of the candlelit circle. The two assistants throw their arms open and announce: “We are The Chorines!”

Muted whoops, muffled applause, a stray whistle.

This time the oracles don't seem so imposing. The nylon threads of their pink nightgowns shine from constant wear. Their cuticles are stained ochre from smoking hand-rolled
cigarettes. They pick the gum from their teeth. They unfold the tops of their socks and scratch the inflamed insect bites on their calves. They let the silence of the room deepen.

Then The Chorines shut their eyes, clear their throats, and start to sing. Their throats vibrate together in a simple wordless tune. The voices circle one another according to an undetectable logic until they settle on a single resonant note. The sound builds to an immersive drone. The walls of the room begin to vibrate. It defies understanding how such a huge noise can radiate from the bodies of these three girls.

The audience seems to know what to do. They begin to join the song, fixing their voices to the choir, one person at a time. They start in the far corner and work their way around the room. Soon it feels like I'm in the middle of a hive. With each new voice, the delirious hum grows more intense.

Despite myself, I get goose bumps. Tears streak my cheeks. The buzzing inside my chest is perfectly attuned to the vibration of the music. Maybe this song is a sort of funereal requiem. Maybe it's meant for me. Sara stares purposefully in my direction. An emotional current surges between us that's understood only by the raised hairs on the back of my neck.

I begin to tremble. My breathing becomes shallow. I part my lips to join the chorus but no sound comes out. I'm choking. My throat gags. My arms and legs convulse. My body pitches itself onto the floor. The voices slowly break apart and a gallery of curious faces hovers overhead, their overlapping shadows smothering me like a blanket. Only Sara continues to sing, that one blissfully sustained note held by her open mouth.

 

 

I regain consciousness in a darkened storeroom. It's piled high with bundles of instruction manuals, cases of empty green bottles, and the propeller from a small crop duster. My body is crumpled in the corner, bundled in musty beach towels. The
entire house is still. I listen to the clattering music of a thunderstorm pelting the roof and the wind whipping against the windows. Somewhere overhead I start to make out the soft sounds of a late-night colloquium. The voices of the oracles.

Maybe we should have a viewing… But what if he's not… We didn't do anything the last time it happened… There could be a cool ceremony… Yeah, you might as well invite the cops… Maybe it's easier to pitch him in the river… But what if he's not… We could have roses everywhere and pennies on his eyes… But what about afterward… There's always the garbage dump… But what if…

I let out a series of soft moans. The voices overhead trail off into silence. Soon there's the sound of tiptoed steps skulking down the hallway. Sara appears in the doorway with crossed arms and observes me. My forehead blazes. Every hair root on my head is a pinprick of pain. The hum of the song still rings in my ears. Eventually I find the words that have been circling my mind for most of the day. I wheeze: “Did the last person who got the blank sheet really die?”

“That's right.” Sara's speaking voice is unexpectedly harsh, a pinched nasal twang. “Not every prophecy comes true. But that one sure did.”

I say: “Maybe there was a mistake this time.”

I say: “How about another reading.”

I say: “I don't want to die.”

Sara chews her lip. In the faint glow filtering through the window from some distant street lamp, her lovely features appear almost embryonic. It's as if her body has cultivated an ability to erase traces of emotion, the way unprimed canvas absorbs paint. “I'll give you a second reading,” she says. “But you have to promise you won't tell anyone.”

I nod, but she's not finished.

“And you leave tomorrow morning,” she says. “I never want
to see your sorry ass again. If there are even rumors that you're lurking nearby, you'll regret it.”

My fevered mind traces Sara's path back upstairs by the diminishing echo of her footfalls. She's greeted by the tense murmurs of the other oracles. This time their conversation is more discrete, volleys of whispers discharged like soft fireworks. They all seem to be pacing at once. Several minutes pass before the trio arrives in the storage room, the assistant oracles ferrying candles to better light the proceedings. In her upturned palms, Sara cradles the red sugar bowl. She calls us to order by rattling the ceramic lid against the edges as if it were a bell.

Sara tips the contents of the bowl onto the wooden floor. It's a collection of neon yellow capsules. She pinches a pill between her thumb and forefinger. It's embossed with a smiley face. “We use these to tell the fortunes,” she explains.

“They're pretty mind-blowing,” one of the assistants adds.

As Sara selects the pills, my fevered mind hits upon an idea. “If I took it, could I see my future?”

Sara and her assistants exchange a look that's more complicated than I am right now. “I guess so,” Sara says. “But it's a bad idea. Most people can't handle it.”

“I want to take it.”

The assistants shake their heads but Sara remains noncommittal. She squeezes her eyes shut and sucks in her cheeks. Finally she hands me the capsule. “There's no guarantee you'll get a different reading,” she says.

I balance the smiling capsule in my sweaty hand. It seems to be winking. Patches of dye rub off the edges. A yellow stain spreads across my palm like a rash. I try to calculate the odds the pill could be hazardous, then I take a deep breath and swallow it. It has a distinct sweet-and-sour aftertaste.

Now there's nothing to do but wait. The house is eerily still. The rain pounds a frenetic tattoo against the windows. Droplets of water accumulate in a remote corner of the attic. Mice burrow
deeper into the soggy folds of insulation. The wooden planks groan in concert with the barometric pressure. Dust motes gently blanket the furniture, moldings, and floorboards. After a few minutes, my vision starts to cloud and the edges of the storage room whiten. At first I think I'm going blind, but then I realize there's nothing to fear. A veil is being lifted. I watch as the house transforms itself around me. The paint on the walls, the furrowed lines of my palms, the oracles huddled in the hallway with their twitching shoulder blades—everything is slowly becoming blank.

I record the events of my life, filling up one notebook after another. Maybe I'm not getting the details exactly right, but it doesn't matter. The strict facts hold no currency here. What counts is the saliva I just spat on this very sheet of paper. The thick gob slowly dissolves a small circle in the text and turns the words translucent. The ink starts to bleed. The fibers loosen. If you run your fingers along this paragraph, you'll feel the site where I stabbed my thumb straight through the page. There is an entire world in that hole.

(14 years old)

 

 

“All true freedom is dark.”

–Antonin Artaud

THERE'S THIS TAPE. IT ARRIVES ONE MORNING IN the mail, which is surprising because I don't have an address. I'm between places, as they say. Specifically, I'm shuttling between a cardboard refrigerator box in the alley next to the Emerald Mountain Chinese restaurant and a wool blanket on the concrete floor of the municipal shelter. But the mailman hand-delivers the package to me just the same. I'm coiled half-asleep in my box and he leaves it at my feet.

This is just the latest in a string of strange happenings in the neighborhood. The Luchos have relocated to these scabby streets and started marking their territory. Every morning freshly shattered glass shimmers on the sidewalks like dew. Kids casually cross the avenue with newly stolen car batteries tucked under their arms like purses. There are stories about winos waking up to bloody incisions and missing kidneys. Someone set a pack of wild dogs loose to roam the rooftops. At night, you can hear them hunting the local cats.

When I spot the package, I let out an involuntary yelp. But it's nothing more than a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and addressed in a blue magic marker scrawl that reads: “The Kid in the Alley behind the Chinese Place on 1st Avenue.” I can't recall if I've ever received mail here before. I'm curious but hesitate to pick it up. For the months I've been living in the city, I've been trying to avoid any intrigue. I'm still struggling to navigate these streets. My world consists of a few square blocks and ritual activities. My focus is keeping body and soul intact.

I open the package with shaky fingers. This cassette tape is a genuine audio relic, tattered and beat-up, but someone decorated it with obvious care. A piece of notebook paper is neatly folded inside the plastic case and a dozen song titles are inscribed in a barely legible hand. Despite myself, the gesture touches me. It isn't some menacing totem, it's a gift. The first present I've received in ages. Of course I don't have any way to play it. So I depart straightaway to see Mister Pastor, the man with all the gadgets and a heart large enough to share them with the likes of me.

The park is nearly vacant. The sky is pitch gray. A chill wind blows loose litter over the concrete pavers, spreading it in even coats. A few homeless have bothered to climb the chain-link fences that protect the partitions of dead grass from the public. They lie sprawled on the ground like neglected sculptures, blackened by the elements. I make my way toward the band shell, a scalloped steel structure as rusted as everything else. Mister Pastor always camps next to the stage in an elaborate compound assembled from shopping carts, cardboard, and plastic sheeting. I kick the side to announce my presence and wait.

The only person nearby is a skeletal old man in a frayed long-coat and stained polka-dot bandana crouched in front of a baby stroller. He makes faces at the child, popping out his yellow dentures with his tongue, and contorting his features into a hideous rictus. The kid somehow remains silent. There's no parent in sight. This is a typical vista.

It takes a few minutes for Mister Pastor to appear. He's decked out in the usual: black knit hat that barely corrals his not-so-natty dreads, mirror sunglasses, and rumpled tan raincoat. Apparently I've woken him because he's launched into a diatribe that isn't quite under his breath. “Damn it, Jeff,” he mutters. “Why the ofays always bothering the Pastor.”

“Somebody sent this to me,” I say. I lay the cassette in his
massive hand for inspection. He turns it over several times, measuring its heft and testing its tactile properties.

“You know who it's from?”

I shake my head.

“And you're not concerned about that?”

“It's a gift,” I say.

Mister Pastor looks at me incredulous. Like: How stupid can you be? I blankly return his stare: Pretty fucking stupid.

He shakes his head and trains his gaze back on the tape, probing the thing like it's some sort of voodoo totem, careful not to disturb its latent powers. “I'd throw this away if I was you,” Mister Pastor says. “Right now.”

“I don't know,” I say. “I kind of want to hear it first.”

Mister Pastor purses his lips so hard that his whole face seems to pucker as if what he has to express could barely be contained by all that bunched flesh. “Guess you must be the boss of you,” he says finally. “So what do you need from me?”

“Walkman,” I say. “So I can listen.”

He sighs and ducks back inside the mouth of his compound. While he rustles through his array of cinched plastic bags and canvas totes, I turn away so I won't see where he stores his treasures. Etiquette. He reappears with a decrepit-looking walkman, both headphones missing their foam casings. “Plays fine,” he says. “Just can't fast forward or rewind.”

I want some privacy so I amble toward the green benches next to the empty dog run. The wind swirls some grimy black condoms and muddy supermarket fliers round my feet. I sit under a clump of bare trees, slide the tape into the player, and place the plastic headphones against my chilly ears. I look closer at the handwriting on the case—the series of curlicues, dashes, odd slants and sudden emphases—and for the first time truly begin to wonder who sent this.

I press play. It takes about fifteen seconds. The first strums of the acoustic guitar and then the onslaught of rattling drums
and ragged horns all at once. And that voice. Oh my God, that voice. I sit transfixed. By the time the majestic echoing chords of the last song fade, something inside me has permanently shifted. Listening to this music is like being turned inside-out and finding the story of your life written on your inner organs. It's like having your blood leeched to remind you that you have blood. It's like—

The tape ends. I flip it over and play it again. And again. The singer sings with an inhuman urgency. He tells his story running and you can almost hear the clip of hooves in pursuit. He spins out tales of drunken fathers too scared to commit suicide, mute twins in white dresses spilling their parents' ashes over a frothing ocean, dead girlfriends reincarnated as black swans, or blue orchids, or flaming pianos. After a while, it's hard to keep it all straight.

Someone shouts from across the park. I switch off the music. I'm surprised to find that I must have been crying because tears stream down my cheeks. Plus there's this faint tang in the air, a damp and acrid odor. I look at my feet. The ground is covered in fresh, grayish-green splatches of pigeon shit. I look at my coat. It's caked in moist gobs of the stuff. No idea how long I've been sitting like this.

More shouts. I turn in their direction but it takes my eyes a few moments to focus. A gang of Luchos strides toward me. Six of them in black parkas, lumberjack boots, and doo-rags. Behind them, a fat plume of smoke billows from the side of the band shell where Mister Pastor is camped. A pack of dogs barks somewhere nearby.

The smart move would be to sprint headlong for the park gates. But instead I keep my ass flat on the bench, transfixed by the cassette case. I feel like I'm on the cusp of decoding its mystery and afraid to take my eyes off the handwriting. The signature lean of the letters, the yawning “o” that seems open
in a shout, the frenetic “w” that hurries past with barely a nod. These are clues.

A thick gob of saliva lands at my feet. The Luchos. They ring the bench, glowering like a surly Greek chorus. One smacks his glossy lips and another rubs the vacant white orb where his cornea used to be. I try to look casual while scouting for potential help. The only person in sight is an elderly woman in a babushka combing the grass for discarded crack vials. A pack of dogs sniffs around her, nipping each other's asses.

Some quick options:
Run.
Not fast enough.
Fight
. Six against one.
Scream for Mister Pastor.
Judging by the fire at the band shell, I have a sinking feeling about that one, too.

The tallest Lucho—El Lucho Jefe—removes his doo-rag, signifying serious business. A thin ridge of bone runs along the top of his scalp, giving him an almost prehistoric profile. I tense. Pure animal reflex.

“Hand it over,” El Lucho Jefe says. His voice is a droning hiss. He balls the doo-rag in his oversized knuckles.

I blankly return his stare.

“The walkman,” El Lucho Jefe says. “That's ours.”

There is only one acceptable response here. All other possible combinations of words are clustered above the same trap door and invite the same vertiginous fall. I brace myself. “It's not yours,” I say.

“You sit in this park,” El Jefe says. “Then it's ours.” He smiles, revealing incisors that have been filed to sharp points.

I look at the cassette case in my palm and the tape slotted into the walkman. That voice. The handwriting. My gift.

“You can't have it,” I say.

“Excuse me?” El Jefe says. He cracks his neck. A theatrical gesture, hand twisting neck to the side; it's accompanied by the loud pop of impacted bone.

“I said, you can't have it.” Normally I skirt beatings whenever possible, but this time is different. Looks fly among the Luchos.
As they silently confer over this unexpected turn, I hoist myself onto the back of the bench. Better leverage in case of attack. For one wild moment, I think of the tape as a grenade that I can hurl at the ground and obliterate the entire gang with a brilliantly loud detonation. I zip the cassette and walkman inside my jacket.

El Lucho Jefe clears his throat. “I'm gonna say this one more—”

I lunge and knock him to the ground. Before he can react, I sink my teeth into his nose and clamp onto it as hard as I can. He screams and tries to throw me, but I hold onto his head and bite down harder. No idea where I get the idea or the ferocity. Maybe it's something from one of the songs.

The other Luchos awkwardly try to pull me off, unsure whether this is causing El Jefe more pain. His nose is squelchy cartilage in my mouth. I can feel it start to give. So can he. More screams. More cursing. I bite down harder. Around us the Luchos are barking like furious dogs. With a savage jerk, I rip my head to the side. His nose is in my mouth. A chunk of spindly, rubbery gristle. There's less blood than you'd think. Everything halts for a moment as El Lucho Jefe gives a heart-shuddering, high-pitched shriek to the heavens. I spit his nose on the ground.

This is when I first notice the pack of dogs has swarmed us. A teeming mass of thick-necked mutts, growling and gnashing their teeth. The Luchos who aren't clustered around the writhing El Jefe lunge at the animals and fight them to reclaim that forsaken lump of flesh.

I tear off down the nearest pathway. The loose soles of my sneakers slap against the concrete as I sprint for the park gates. My precious cargo is still zipped inside my jacket, cuffing against my heart as I run. Two frothing mutts are fast on my tail.

I dash out of the park and spy the wall of a community garden across the street. As I scuttle up the steel fence, one of the dogs snaps at my calf. I give it a ringing kick to the jaw and climb higher. A metal barb peels off the knee of my jeans. More
scraped skin. Huffing and wheezing, I finally pull myself to the top of the fence. The dogs pace below with bared teeth. They have me tree'd but I don't care.

It turns out I'm pretty high up. A panorama of the entire park unfolds before me. Thick veils of smoke still heave from beside the band shell. The Luchos limply drag El Jefe toward the far avenue to hail a taxi. A handful of people lie face-down on patches of lawn. One of them, the elderly woman in the babushka, is dead. Not sure how I know, but somehow, from up here, I can tell.

Black storm clouds mass overhead. A sour wind stings my eyes. The dogs continue their angry vigil, but I'm no longer afraid. I remove the walkman from my jacket and play the cassette from the beginning. I squeeze my skinned knees together against the fence and press my hands over my ears. From the first quavering notes, I can feel again how everything has changed. The city streets below aren't the same streets as a few hours ago. The cardboard box behind the Chinese restaurant isn't the same cardboard box. There is blood smeared on my lips, and I let it remain.

The graffiti appears several days later. Or maybe it's been there all along. The back walls of the Chinese restaurant are covered with slogans and scribbles, but this morning one particular tag catches my eye. It's a silver spray paint sketch of a king's crown with a line through it. A single word is scrawled underneath. It says “Seen.” I sit in my cardboard box and fixate on it for several minutes. I'm entranced by the flowing and interlocking lines of the design. They leave me with an inexplicable chill.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of chorgling noises from the nearby dumpster. The fat kid must be back again. His head shoots up above the metal rim, his face smeared with the
runny leftovers of General Tsao's Chicken and Egg Foo Young. He's worse than the rats. He gorges himself on almost everything, including the greased plastic paper. I scoop some loose rocks and bottle caps off the ground and hurl them at him. “Get out of here,” I hiss.